


All That's Left is Dust and Cinders

by victoriousscarf



Series: Stars Burn Out [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Post The Force Awakens, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When everything has fallen apart sometimes all you can do is pick up the pieces and try again.</p><p>(How many times do you have to start over?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That's Left is Dust and Cinders

**Author's Note:**

> So this is pretty much picking up right after the last scene of the Force Awakens so SPOILERS for that. Spoileeeers. Move away. 
> 
> I saw the movie again tonight and this apparently decided to turn into a verse. There's a second story that's supposed to go between the first one and this I haven't written it yet but it should be up soon. I just ended up with this image first so here we go.

“I don't want that,” Luke said, because he had seen the ship land, had not felt Han anywhere on it and now a girl was holding out the lightsaber he had lost—lost decades ago in Bespin. He had assumed it had been spit out by the city like he had, tumbling down into the gas below.

But now here it was.

“It's yours,” the girl said, still thrusting it out and Luke wanted to sink down into the ground and cry. But he had been doing quite enough of that the last several years.

“It was,” Luke said. “But it's not been for a long time.”

She took a breath, her chest heaving before she withdrew her hand. “So you're Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi.”

“Yes,” he said softly.

“I've been hearing so many stories about you,” she said. “The last few days—weeks, maybe, now. We went through, we went through a lot to find you.”

Luke didn't want to ask, about the shadows in her eyes and the way her hand was holding the lightsaber.

“I didn't want to be found.”

“Apparently not,” she agreed. He could feel a shiver in the Force between them, some threads connecting them and he wanted to ignore it. He wondered if Obi-Wan ever felt like this, during his own exile. To want to turn away and pretend the Galaxy didn't need him again, if he ever became complacent in the desert.

Except Obi-Wan had slipped into the Catina like putting on his right skin again, bartering and swinging his lightsaber like he had never spent years in exile.

That's not how Luke felt now.

“We need you,” the girl said, and there was such determination in her eyes. If Luke thought about it, he would recognize that expression. “The galaxy needs you again. I need you.”

“The galaxy has somehow been holding itself together just fine,” Luke started.

“The Republic Senate was destroyed!” she said and he breathed. “The First Order—they made a super weapon, a planet, and they destroyed the whole... the whole world.”

Luke closed his eyes because didn't that sound familiar.

“The Galaxy needs the Jedi,” she said. “Kylo Ren—”

Luke closed his eyes. “Destroyed my last school,” he said.

She paused, still holding the lightsaber and it felt odd to realize it looked right in her hands, like she should have always been holding it. “Well, he's still killing. I fought him and... while we were fighting, I felt something. I think it was the Force. I gave myself up to it and fought and I might have won, but we were interrupted. And when I touched this,” and she gestured with the lightsaber. “The first time, I had a vision. I heard these voices, and they showed me things, and I need your help.”

Sighing, Luke looked over the cliff he was standing on.

“I think I'm strong in the Force,” she said, wavering over the words like after everything she still wasn't quite sure. “I need your training.”

“I'm not very good at it,” he said and there was bitterness he had never been able to lance out. It was why he had hidden instead, useless and broken.

She braced her jaw. “You're the only one I have to turn to.” He turned his head away. “The Galaxy needs the Jedi,” she said. “I need you. Your friends miss you.”

“Do they?” Luke asked and he knew they did, that they must have but— “I let the two people I care most about down. I let their son—” he shook his head.

“Leia is the one who sent me,” the girl said. “She misses you _so much_. The way she talks about you. The way Han,” and she stopped, cut off with her throat closing up. 

Luke  _knew_ because Luke already knew. He could feel Leia and Han no matter where the three of them were in the Galaxy. Once their pain had drawn him across systems toward them, and once it had driven him as far away as he could hide himself. 

“You should have seen the way he talked about you,” the girl continued. “The pauses, the pain. He missed you. You don't understand how much—When I met him he had been without his ship for years, he was smuggling dangerous cargo. Han Solo was a legend to me as a kid, the man who made the Kessel Run,” she stopped again to gather herself. “But I heard about him being a general, a war hero, what you did together. And he wasn't doing that anymore. He was hiding too. But he came back, for you, to find you, when he heard we had the map to find you he came back—” She looked at the ground and if it had been any other time in his life, Luke would have reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder, to offer any comfort he could have. 

“He missed you,” she continued. “He offered me a job, before all this went wrong,” and Luke closed his eyes again. Sometimes he still thought he was on the _Falcon_ when he closed his eyes. He could imagine the hum of her engines, the clatter of Han working on her. “And now Kylo Ren has killed him and I need your help.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “He was your friend, wasn't he? We all need you.”

“Haven't I sacrificed enough for this Galaxy yet?” Luke asked, a hoarse whisper. “Haven't I given enough yet?”

She squared her shoulders, meeting his eyes. “You're the last Jedi,” she said. “I suppose that means something.”

He looked down to where the  _Falcon_ had landed and thought about Chewbacca, who was probably standing below with the ship. He dared not reach out with the Force and find out one way or the other. 

He had felt Han die, startling out of his meditation with a scream, like the lightsaber had gone through him too. He had known then it was over, even though he refused to really believe in what that meant. 

Finally he lifted his head and looked at her, and she looked so much like Leia in her sheer determination it almost took his breath away. 

“I might not be able to help you,” he said, because his chest was in jagged pieces, and he wasn't sure he would be able to hold himself together. Because he had left Han, always intending to come back some day, if Han ever wanted him, and now it was too late. 

“I just need you to try,” she said and he slowly picked the pieces of himself back up and tried to slot them into the right place.

“Alright,” he promised on the windy cliff above the thundering sea below, because he had never really had a choice. 

The girl smiled at him and it felt like someone had stabbed him. “Thank you,” she said. 

Luke almost said it wasn't for her he was helping, but that would have been something of a lie so he only nodded. “I will do the best by you I can,” he said, and didn't think it would be much.

“That's all I'm asking,” she said and Luke thought of all the others who had said that and meant they were going to ask so much more of him.

How many more people could he disappoint when he had promised to himself to never do that again?

But Han was gone and the universe hadn't ended and neither had he. 

“Than we have a long way to go,” he said, holding out his hand. 

 


End file.
